Billings historian brings battlefields to life

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Mont. (AP) — — On a hot, nearly windless day in early August, Edwin C. Bearss is looking across the Little Bighorn River as he describes an early scene in the battle that would come to be known as Custer's Last Stand.

He is dressed in a ball cap, two T-shirts and a pair of stained khaki pants held up by an ancient leather belt. His hiking boots, by contrast, are sturdy and relatively new. He looks like a man who can't be bothered by superfluities.

Historian Ed Bearss points to a ridge where US Cavalry soldiers rode to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Bearss recounts details of the Battle of the Little Bighorn with a vivid immediacy, sometimes squeezing his eyes shut, as if imagining himself there on that fateful day of June 25, 1876.